Stephen King is the ideal contemporary gothic horror novelist.
He is joined by the pantheon of great authors mingling with the likes of Clive Barker, Anne Rice and Dean Koontz. He is one of the horror writers who remain vigilant in the face of their fears. He gives the fears he shares with the audience a face or, in the case of “1408,” a place.
“1408,” to put it simply, is a horror movie about a cynical writer who is trying to find or disprove whether or not there is something other than this life. He is known for studying and debunking the paranormal. He then finds out about a room that people do not last more than an hour and intelligently, dutifully goes to the Dolphin Hotel to check into the room where 56 people never checked out in the commonly agreed upon standard of checking out of a hotel. It spirals downward from investigation to madness and madness to the torture of Hell itself.
Starting off a simple short story “1408” was not as impressive as other short stories King has written in the past. Now the film adaptation is out in the theatres and it is one of the strongest cinematic experiences adapted from any of King’s writings. It even rivals Stanley Kubrick’s version of “The Shining.”
The director did great work with casting and presenting the supremely strange and unusual events of the story and kept it a faithful adaptation of the story. The lighting, music, setting and camera work accentuate the beautiful emotional ride that the film is. It made the mundane and creepy hotel setting into the truly frightening. The special effects and setting makes for truly disorienting twists and turns. Great horror is supposed to knock you off balance and make you question what you have seen; “1408” excels at that. The casting could not have been done any better.
John Cusack (High Fidelity, Identity) plays Mike Enslin beautifully since he has experience with the general character personality. Bitter, cynical, lost, trying to find proof of something or find out why something, trying to get people to see things the way he does, so on and so forth. Samuel L. Jackson plays Gerald Olin masterfully and covers the fearful hotel owner bit beautifully. Mary McCormack plays Lily Enslin perfectly as the ex-wife that falls into worry for the old hubby. Jasmine Jessica Anthony plays the long “lost” daughter. Yeah, she is dead and has been for a while. Her innocence and occasional sorrow is just heart breaking.
The film is nothing less than incredible. Seeing “1408” in the theatre or buying a copy of it when it comes out on DVD is more than worth the price. The hour’s almost up. In the words of Mike Enslin, “stay scared.”